BOWLING GREEN — At some point between now and the start of next football season, Bowling Green expects to use its three remaining open scholarships, and the Falcons likely will dip into the transfer portal to do so — but that's not the complicated part of this offseason.
A confluence of NCAA rules, the coronavirus pandemic, an expected but currently delayed rule change, and timing have created a massive backlog of players in the transfer portal, and Falcons coach Scot Loeffler said the current situation is only hurting the players.
Current NCAA rules mandate that Bowl Subdivision teams are allowed to add no more than 25 new scholarship players per season — called initial counters — although most programs have already burned most of those spots for 2021 thanks to the early signing window in December.
The NCAA is widely expected to pass a significant rule change that would allow football players to transfer once without penalty, although the legislation still has not passed and it is uncertain if players who transfer now will be forced to miss next season as they would have in previous seasons.
Further, coronavirus has stopped recruiting visits completely. Added together, the transfer portal has a big problem: Far too many players and nowhere near enough spots.
“The long and short of it is, where are these guys going to go?” Loeffler said. “The reason that I say that: Let's say everyone has a scholarship left. That's 130 scholarships with 2,700 or 2,800 kids in the portal. Where are they going to go?
“For this portal to truly work and truly benefit the player, they might have to reconsider how they're handling the 25 [scholarship] hard cap.”
Bowling Green has been no exception, having seen a number of exits from last season's team.
Its top three leading receivers are all gone, as tight end Quintin Morris will enter the NFL draft, while receivers Julian Ortega-Jones and Noah Massey both entered the transfer portal, with Massey landing at Division II Angelo (Texas) State.
Starting center Cameron Stage transferred to Western Kentucky, and three players with starting experience on defense entered their names into the portal: Starting linebacker Jerry Roberts, who was third on the team in tackles; defensive tackle DeMontae Haigler, who was injured in 2020 but made a dozen starts at BG, and cornerback Diata Burns, who started four times in 2020.
All players, with the exception of Burns, were recruited by the previous coaching staff.
Under the current rules, however, BG can't replace the outgoing scholarship players — it can only use initial counters from the current cycle.
The Falcons are considering only players with multiple years remaining, and ideally would like to play them as soon as next season. But even using the open scholarships, Loeffler said, is a challenge with the possible rule change regarding a one-time penalty-free transfer.
“We're going to, more than likely, take three out of there with the three initial counters, but we keep going, 'What's the rule?’” Loeffler said. “If we bring in a kid right now, they'd have to sit for the fall. We have to wait for the summer time to bring them in anyway, so we're sitting tight and waiting on them to decide how this thing is really going to work.”
Loeffler said he thinks allowing a relaxation of the hard cap plus the one-time transfer rule would alleviate many of the current problems. The third-year Bowling Green coach said, while there always will be a market for high-end players, especially quarterbacks, the system needs work to benefit the most number of players.
"I mean, I have three scholarships left. Some people have none," Loeffler said. "Where are these guys going to go? It's really not benefiting the student-athlete at all right now. It's an issue the NCAA has to figure out.
“It's a huge logjam right now and there aren't a lot of people moving out of it. It's a problem that they've got to solve.”
First Published January 25, 2021, 8:09 p.m.
